Loneliness, like a bad cold, can spread among groups of people, new research finds.

While a runny nose might spread through handshakes, people likely catch the loneliness bug through negative interactions. A lonely person will be less trusting of others, essentially “making a mountain out of a molehill,” said study researcher John Cacioppo, a psychologist at the University of Chicago. An odd look or phrasing by a friend that wouldn’t even be noticed by a chipper person could be seen as an affront to the lonely, triggering a cycle of negative interactions that cause people to lose friends.

The upshot: A lonely person is likely to lose touch with another person, who in turn gets cut off from others, and both end up on the fringes of a social group.

“A lonely person who anticipates others are going to act negatively toward them finds evidence in their environment for that, partly because they anticipate it and partly because they elicit it,” Cacioppo said.

The finding, published in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggests that loneliness is not a character trait, as in “that person is such a loner,” but more of a state such as hunger, which evolved as a cue to motivate our ancestors to go find food.

“We’re fundamentally a social species so we need others with whom we can cooperate and work,” Cacioppo said. As such, loneliness may have been a cue to look out for anyone who might ostracize you, he added.

Counting friends

The results come from a study of more than 5,000 individuals who took part in the Framingham Heart Study between 1991 and 2001. Every two to four years, subjects completed questionnaires that measured depression and loneliness, gave their medical history and underwent a physical examination.

For instance, participants indicated how often during the previous week they had experienced a particular feeling, including loneliness, with four possible answers: 0-1 days, 1-2 days, 3-4 days and 5-7 days.

Participants also indicated friends and relatives, many of whom also took part in the study.

From this information, the researchers pieced together social networks showing connections between each individual and the average number of lonely days for the participant and that person’s links.

Loneliness spreads

They found loneliness is catchy with three degrees of separation. So a person’s loneliness depended not just on his friend’s loneliness but also on his friend’s friend and his friend’s friend’s friend. Participants were 52 percent more likely to be lonely if a person to whom they were directly connected (one degree of separation) was lonely. For two degrees of separation, the number drops to 25 percent and 15 percent for three degrees.

The number of family members had no effect on loneliness scores.

Over time, lonely individuals become lonelier and transmit such feelings to others before severing ties. “People with few friends are more likely to become lonelier over time, which then makes it less likely that they will attract or try to form new social ties,” they write. Such friendless individuals ended up on the outskirts of their social networks.

Loneliness has been linked with various mental and physical illnesses, including depression. And so the findings could have practical implications. “Society may benefit by aggressively targeting the people in the periphery to help repair their social networks and to create a protective barrier against loneliness that can keep the whole network from unraveling,” Cacioppo said.

Since we’re not big juice drinkers in our house, OJ usually only makes its way into our fridge when guests come to visit. Even then, it still takes us a few weeks to polish off the carton. I never thought much about keeping the OJ for a few weeks. After all, it still tastes good—and we usually finish it before the expiration date. Then I read this study that showed opened OJ loses all antioxidant benefit after just one week! Seriously? Well, as you can imagine, this led me to wonder if other items in my kitchen lose their health punch over time.

Keep track of how long you store these 4 items. Here’s why: certain nutrients are unstable when exposed to oxygen (from the air), heat (from cooking) and light.

Orange juice: 1 week
One cup of OJ can offer a full day’s dose of vitamin C. But OJ that has been opened loses all antioxidant benefit after just one week. To get the most vitamin C, buy frozen concentrate and drink within a few days. Frozen concentrate is exposed to less light and air.
Green tea: 6 months
A 2009 study in the Journal of Food Science showed that catechins (antioxidants linked with a reduced risk of some cancers) in green tea decreased markedly over time. After six months, catechin levels were 32 percent lower. Make the most of the antioxidants by storing tea in a sealed container in a dark, cool place.

Olive oil: 6 months
Extra-virgin olive oil contains more than 45 heart-healthy antioxidants, but after six months of storage their potency decreases by about 40 percent, according to researchers at the University of Foggia in Italy. Why? Oxygen bubbles in the bottle destroy the antioxidants.

Honey: 6 months
Researchers at the University of Illinois found the antioxidant power of clover and buckwheat honey decreased by 30 to 50 percent after six months. Consider buying buckwheat honey—it generally has more antioxidants to start with.

High blood levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) may increase a person’s risk for heart attack and death, but not for stroke, a new study has found.

The study included 2,240 people in New York City who were 40 or older and stroke-free. At the start of the study, the participants’ blood was checked for levels of CRP (a marker for inflammation) and their heart attack and stroke risk factors were evaluated by researchers.

During an average follow-up of eight years, there were 198 strokes, 156 heart-related events and 586 deaths. People with CRP levels greater than 3 milligrams per liter of blood were 70 percent more likely to have a heart attack and 55 percent more likely to die than those with CRP levels of 1 milligram per liter or less, the researchers reported in the Oct. 20 print issue of Neurology.

After they took other risk factors into account, the study authors concluded that CRP levels didn’t influence stroke risk.

“The role of this protein in predicting risk of stroke has been controversial, although prior studies have found it to be a marker for predicting risk of heart disease,” study author Dr. Mitchell Elkind, of Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, said in a news release from the American Academy of Neurology. “However, in our large, multiethnic population, CRP levels did not play a role in predicting stroke, though they may still help determine whether someone is at risk of heart attack or early death.”

CRP levels are influenced by factors such as physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption and diabetes.

“It appears that by living a healthy lifestyle, one may be able to lower these protein levels, thus lowering the risk of cardiac events and possibly early death,” Elkind said.

“It may be that the failure of CRP to predict stroke in our study, unlike in some other populations, reflects the fact that our population is older and has more of these risk factors. While CRP may be predictive in generally young healthy people, it may be less useful among older, sicker people. More research needs to be done on why the protein wasn’t able to predict stroke in the same manner as heart disease,” he said.

A new study finds obese people have 8 percent less brain tissue than normal-weight individuals. Their brains look 16 years older than the brains of lean individuals, researchers said today.

Those classified as overweight have 4 percent less brain tissue and their brains appear to have aged prematurely by 8 years.

The results, based on brain scans of 94 people in their 70s, represent “severe brain degeneration,” said Paul Thompson, senior author of the study and a UCLA professor of neurology.

“That’s a big loss of tissue and it depletes your cognitive reserves, putting you at much greater risk of Alzheimer’s and other diseases that attack the brain,” said Thompson. “But you can greatly reduce your risk for Alzheimer’s, if you can eat healthily and keep your weight under control.”

The findings are detailed in the online edition of the journal Human Brain Mapping.

Obesity packs many negative health effects, including increased risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and some cancers. It’s also been shown to reduce sexual activity.

More than 300 million worldwide are now classified as obese, according to the World Health Organization. Another billion are overweight. The main cause, experts say: bad diet, including an increased reliance on highly processed foods.

Obese people had lost brain tissue in the frontal and temporal lobes, areas of the brain critical for planning and memory, and in the anterior cingulate gyrus (attention and executive functions), hippocampus (long-term memory) and basal ganglia (movement), the researchers said in a statement today. Overweight people showed brain loss in the basal ganglia, the corona radiata, white matter comprised of axons, and the parietal lobe (sensory lobe).

“The brains of obese people looked 16 years older than the brains of those who were lean, and in overweight people looked 8 years older,” Thompson said.

Obesity is measured by body mass index (BMI), defined as the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters. A BMI over 25 is defined as overweight, and a BMI of over 30 as obese.

The research was funded by the National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Center for Research Resources, and the American Heart Association.

One in three breast cancer patients identified in public screening programs may be treated unnecessarily, a new study says. Karsten Jorgensen and Peter Gotzsche of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen analyzed breast cancer trends at least seven years before and after government-run screening programs for breast cancer started in parts of Australia, Britain, Canada, Norway and Sweden.

The research was published Friday in the BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal. Jorgensen and Gotzsche did not cite any funding for their study.

Once screening programs began, more cases of breast cancer were inevitably picked up, the study showed. If a screening program is working, there should also be a drop in the number of advanced cancer cases detected in older women, since their cancers should theoretically have been caught earlier when they were screened.

However, Jorgensen and Gotzsche found the national breast cancer screening systems, which usually test women aged between 50 and 69, simply reported thousands more cases than previously identified.

Overall, Jorgensen and Gotzsche found that one third of the women identified as having breast cancer didn’t actually need to be treated.

Some cancers never cause symptoms or death, and can grow too slowly to ever affect patients. As it is impossible to distinguish between those and deadly cancers, any identified cancer is treated. But the treatments can have harmful side-effects and be psychologically scarring.

“This information needs to get to women so they can make an informed choice,” Jorgensen said. “There is a significant harm in making women cancer patients without good reason.”

Jorgensen said that for years, women were urged to undergo breast cancer screening without them being informed of the risks involved, such as having to endure unnecessary treatment if a cancer was identified, even if it might never threaten their health.

Doctors and patients have long debated the merits of prostate cancer screening out of similar concerns that it overdiagnoses patients. A study in the Netherlands found that as many as two out of every five men whose prostate cancer was caught through a screening test had tumors too slow-growing to ever be a threat.

“Mammography is one of medicine’s ‘close calls,’ … where different people in the same situation might reasonably make different choices,” wrote H. Gilbert Welch of VA Outcomes Group and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Research, in an accompanying editorial in the BMJ. “Mammography undoubtedly helps some women but hurts others.”

Experts said overtreatment occurs wherever there is widespread cancer screening, including the U.S.

Britain’s national health system recently ditched its pamphlet inviting women to get screened for breast cancer, after critics complained it did not explain the overtreatment problem.

Laura Bell of Cancer Research UK said Britain’s breast cancer screening program was partly responsible for the country’s reduced breast cancer cases.

“We still urge women to go for screening when invited,” she said, though she acknowledged it was crucial for women to be informed of the potential benefits and harms of screening.

A Swiss study shows what past research has also concluded — that women are more likely than men to develop lung cancer as a result of smoking.

After studying 683 lung cancer patients over five years, the study showed that women were more likely to develop a adenocarcinoma, a common form of the disease. They were also apt to be diagnosed earlier and smoke fewer cigarettes than their male counterparts.

“Our findings suggest that women may have an increased susceptibility to tobacco carcinogens,” the lead researcher assessed.

American scientists have previously maintained that women are more likely to have a gene that promotes lung cancer growth.

This new research was presented over the weekend at a cancer conference in Switzerland. Co-chair of the event, Dr Enriqueta Felip, agreed that there is increasing evidence that women are more likely to suffer the long-term effects of smoking.

“In the early 1900s lung cancer was reported to be rare in women. But since the 1960s it has progressively reached epidemic proportions, becoming the leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the United States,” she said.

She also said an area of concern is that women are probably more aware of other cancers, such as breast cancer.

I think it would be easy to look at this kind of scientific research, as well as bans on public smoking and increasing taxes on cigarettes, and cry out that it is unfair and all a big infringement. But really, I think it is all more information to add to the file labeled “Why women need to be taking better care of their bodies.”

Whether it is equitable or easy or not, these are all just more reasons for women to find a way to be done smoking. For good.

An analysis of “real-world” clinical data indicates that vitamin E, and drugs that reduce generalized inflammation, may slow the decline of mental and physical abilities in people with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) over the long term.

“Our results are consistent for a potential benefit of vitamin E on slowing functional decline and a smaller possible benefit of anti-inflammatory medications on slowing cognitive decline in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. Alireza Atri told Reuters Health.

Atri, at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the VA Bedford Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School, Boston, led the National Institutes of Health-sponsored research. The findings, reported at the annual meeting of the American Geriatrics Society in Chicago, stem from data on 540 patients treated at the MGH Memory Disorders Unit.

All of the patients were receiving standard-of-care treatment with a drug intended to help patients with Alzheimer’s. As part of their clinical care, 208 patients also took vitamin E but no anti-inflammatory, 49 took an anti-inflammatory but no vitamin E, 177 took both vitamin E and an anti-inflammatory, and 106 took neither.

While the daily dose of vitamin E ranged from 200 to 2000 units, the majority of patients were given high doses that ranged from 800 units daily to 1000 units twice daily.

Each patient’s performance on cognitive tests and their ability to carry out daily functions such as dressing and personal care were assessed every 6 months. After an average of 3 years, “there was a modest slowing of decline in function in those patients taking vitamin E,” study investigator Michael R. Flaherty noted in a telephone interview with Reuters Health.

Flaherty, a second-year student at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine in Biddeford, Maine, presented the findings at the meeting. He added that the treatment benefit from vitamin E was “small to medium” but increased with time.

Taking an anti-inflammatory medication was associated with “very consistent but generally only small effects on slowing long-term decline in cognitive functioning,” Atri told Reuters Health.

However, in patients who took both vitamin E and anti-inflammatory medications, there appeared to be an additive effect in terms of slowing overall decline.

Given that past studies have produced equivocal results, the investigators conclude that further studies are needed to assess the long-term balance of risks versus benefits for people with Alzheimer’s disease from taking vitamin E and anti-inflammatory drugs.

True to their reputation as leisure-loving gourmets, the French spend more time sleeping and eating than anyone else among the world’s wealthy nations, according to a study published Monday.

The average French person sleeps almost nine hours every night, more than an hour longer than the average Japanese and Korean, who sleep the least in a survey of 18 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Despite their siesta habit, Spaniards rank only third in the poll after Americans, who sleep more than 8.5 hours.

And while more and more French people grab a bite at fast-food chains these days or wolf down a sandwich at their desk, they still spend more than two hours a day eating.

That means their meals are twice as long as those of the average Mexican, who dedicates just over an hour a day to food, the OECD’s “Society at a Glance” report on work, health and leisure in Asia, Europe and North and South America found.

The Japanese, scrimping on sleep and burdened with long commutes and working hours, still manage to spend close to two hours a day eating and drinking, placing them third behind New Zealanders.

The Japanese like to spend what remains of their scarce free time watching television or listening to the radio. This takes up 47 percent of leisure time in Japan.

Turks, on the other hand, spend more than a third of their leisure time entertaining friends.

The survey showed that the split between work and leisure time within certain countries is striking.

“Italian men have nearly 80 minutes a day of leisure more than women. Much of the additional work of Italian women is apparently spent cleaning the house,” the OECD said in a statement.

The OECD has 30 members. The survey covers only the countries for which appropriate figures were available.

Some people are more prone to extreme anxiety because of a genetic mutation that they have inherited, according to one of the first studies to investigate the genetic basis of personality differences that can lead to stress disorders.

The mutation is found in about half the population but it exerts its effect on the one in four people who have inherited both copies of it from their parents, the study has found. Such people are at significantly higher risk of being more anxious than the general population and of suffering from anxiety-related conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive illnesses.

Scientists say the findings show that it is possible to identify genetic differences between people that directly affect the neuro-transmitting chemicals in the brain influencing variations in psychological traits.

Although many factors affect anxiety, the researchers believe the discovery opens the way to identifying further genes that can predispose someone to becoming nervous to the point of developing a psychological illness.

“This single gene variation is potentially only one of many factors influencing such a complex trait as anxiety. Still, to identify this first candidate for genes associated with an anxiety-prone personality is a step in the right direction,” said Christian Montag of the University of Bonn, a member of the research team.

“It might be possible to prescribe the right dose of the right drug, relative to genetic make-up, to treat anxiety disorders,” Dr Montag said.

The study focused on a gene known as COMT, which controls an enzyme that breaks down and so weakens the signal of dopamine, a key neurotransmitter in the brain associated with several psychological conditions, such as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia.

The gene comes in two variations, met158 and val158, and the people who are most likely to be anxious are those who have inherited both copies of the met158 gene variant from each of their parents. In the white European population, about 25 per cent of people have this genetic make-up. The theory is that people with both copies of the met158 gene variant have a stronger dopamine signal in their brain, which results in an “inflexible attentional focus” – they cannot tear themselves away from an unpleasant stimulus even if it is a bad one.

The scientists, whose study is published today in the journal Behavioural Neuroscience, investigated the role of the COMT gene variations on 96 young women who fell into one of three genetic makeups – met/met, val/val or met/val.

Martin Reuter, a Bonn University researcher who was a leading member of the research team, said that the women were each shown images of varying unpleasantness while being subjected to a sudden loud noise to startle them so that their blink reflex could be measured.

“We used the startle reflex because it’s a very old evolutionary indication of anxiety. It’s not something you can manipulate or fake. The startle response is stronger when they were watching a negative image, and there was a significantly greater startle response from the met/met women compared with the rest of the group,” Dr Reuter said. “Anxiety is a very complex phenomenon and many genes are responsible for it but this particular genetic variation, although involved in a small part of the anxiety response, is an essential part of it.”

One of the longer-term goals of the study is to be able to identify the gene variations that predispose some people to extreme anxiety in order that drugs can be designed to combat the risk, Dr Reuter said. “It may give us a hint for drug therapy, but the brain is very complex,” he said.

Heightened activity in an area of the brain that deals with memory may give a subtle early warning of dementia decades later, UK research suggests.

It was known that carrying a rogue version of a gene called ApoE4 raised the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Now researchers have linked the same mutation with raised activity in an area of the brain called the hippocampus in people as young as 20.

The study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The researchers, from Oxford University and Imperial College London, believe over-activity in the hippocampus may effectively wear it out, raising the risk of dementia in later life.

They hope their work could be a first step towards developing a simple method to identify people at increased risk of developing dementia.

They could then potentially be offered early treatment and lifestyle advice.

Carrying one copy of the rogue ApoE4 gene raises the risk of Alzheimer’s by up to four times the normal, two copies by up to 10 times.

But not everyone with the rogue gene will develop the condition.

The latest study used scans to compare brain activity in 36 volunteers aged 20 to 35.

In those who carried the rogue gene activity in the hippocampus was consistently raised, even at rest.

Researcher Dr Clare Mackay said: “These are exciting first steps towards a tantalising prospect: a simple test that will be able to distinguish who will go on to develop Alzheimer’s.”

Caution urged

Dr Peter Nestor, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, said: “The findings of this study are of considerable interest but should not be over-interpreted to mean that Alzheimer’s disease is already starting to develop in this young, healthy group of volunteers.

“Whether or not the differences seen in those with ApoE4 can offer a clue to what makes some brains more likely to develop Alzheimer’s is a challenge for future studies.”

Rebecca Wood, of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said the research was a “significant development”.

“It takes us a step closer to accurately predicting who will develop Alzheimer’s before any symptoms become apparent.

“However, we are not yet at that stage; those with the ApoE4 genetic variant - while at a statistically higher risk of developing the disease than others - will still not develop Alzheimer’s in most cases.

“The causes of Alzheimer’s are complex - both genetic and environmental - and if we can understand these better, we can enhance efforts to help people lower their risks.”

Professor Clive Ballard, director of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “This study paves the way for further research that could help us understand how brain function in younger adults may contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease later in life.”